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Ikea versus Apple

via www.fixr.com

So Who Really Owns Facebook?

via thenextweb.com

Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page

LivingSocial Just Declared War On The Daily Deal Aggregators

Why would LivingSocial cut off a source of new customers? A few reasons:

• The aggregators are a potential source of competition. Right now, they are all tiny compared to LivingSocial and Groupon, but new miniature Groupon clones are starting up every day, so the potential value of these aggregators is very real.

• Aggregators compete for the same users in the same channels as the companies they aggregate. A source at an aggregator says LivingSocial explained to them that it didn't want its money reinvested in bids on the very keywords LivingSocial advertises against.

• The pure-play Groupon clone race is over. When LivingSocial still had to establish itself as the clear number two behind Groupon, it made sense to throw money at any possible source of users. At this point, the next-biggest pure-play daily deal companies are a tenth LivingSocial's size, and don't look like a threat. Any new competition will come from different but related business models -- like the aggregators.

via www.sfgate.com

Considering hundreds of daily deal sites out in the wild, deal aggregators are going to win this battle pretty soon even without the affiliate income. Aggregators definitely create more value than standalone daily deal sites.

Facebook vs Twitter - 2010 Social Demographics

via thenextweb.com

Groupon Files Lawsuit Against Australian Clone “Scoopon”

In fact, we tried to do just that, reluctantly offering Gabby and Hezi Leibovich about $286,000 for the Groupon.com.au domain and trademark—an offer they accepted. But now they’ve changed their minds, and we believe that they’ll only sell us the domain and trademark if we’re willing to buy the entire Scoopon business from them. Left with no other options, we’ve filed a lawsuit against Scoopon, claiming that their Groupon trademark was filed in bad faith (amongst other things).”

via techcrunch.com

Easy money... I should have bought groupon.com.tr

Facebook, Twitter, & startup valuations - The best properties always look too expensive

The best properties always look too expensive. Market leaders command the highest prices. It is only a year or two later that they look like great deals. The experts thought Microsoft was crazy when they invested $240M in Facebook at a $15B valuation. Crazy like a fox. Digital Sky Technologies invested $200M in Facebook in May of 2010 at a $10B valuation. The "experts" thought the Russians had gone crazy. What do they think now? Just 7 months later Goldman Sachs is investing $500M at a $50B valuation. No one ever called Goldman Sachs crazy.

via dondodge.typepad.com